We are certainly needing to look at alternate heating methods. In my neck of the woods Propane is now $3.07 a gallon. In this milder winter climate - a hundred gallons a month of LP is now $307 when it used to be about $100 just a couple of years ago. The local firewood guys know this and delivered firewood is very pricy too. And natural gas seems to be in toe with propane.

We continue to look at alternate heat sources - Now that our son is old enough to know better, we are returning to buring more wood in our fireplace insert (splitting our own wood, of course) and reducing other areas of propane use - like getting back to hanging our clothes out to dry. We have recently added PV Solar to our house with a battery back up. We expect little to no electric bills in the future and could effectively function off the grid should a legnthly outage occur. We are already on a well and septic, so we are pretty capable of maintaining the basics at our home despite the ever constant water/power issues that pop up in California (rolling black-outs, water restrictions, etc.).